Unravel and Stability

Stability on Weaver’s is getting nerfed. All stability is being removed from stances except Stone Resonance. In petition to the Dev’s, can an exception be made for stability on Unravel as well?

Unravel was under performing and rarely used when first introduced. So, boons were added as compensation. Protection is now being reduced in duration with the next patch and stability is removed. Unravel’s value is dwindling once again.

With stability, Unravel still has a fighting chance to take up a utility slot. What’s great is, Sword Weaver’s don’t use this utility! It wouldn’t buff the most over-performing Ele build. In fact, keeping stability isn’t buffing Unravel, but ensuring it doesn’t lose its current value.

I understand your concern for stability uptime but also note how all their changes are theme-based:

Stone Resonance- channel the power of earth magic to gain barrier and (now) stability. This change actually works perfectly from a thematic point of view, and I like it a lot. Right now, this stance is not very good because it gives only barrier, which you already get a lot from other sources. After the change it will actually be valuable to slot instead of your standard picks.

Also, think back to Smothering Aura condi cleanse change - you attune to fire and gain fire aura, which cleanses a condition (aka "cleanse by fire"). You then detonate your fire aura and release a fire wave that cleanses additional two condis from you. Also works perfectly from a thematic point of view.

This is why they will never add condi cleanse on Lightning Rod (which I know Grimjack is a huge proponent of) because it just doesn't work from a thematic point of view. You cc your enemy and call a lightning strike which weakens them (works thematically), but it shouldn't cleanse condis (doesn't make sense why would it ever cleanse anything off of you). If they ever add condi cleanse to Air, it would be a different trait.

Unravel - temporarily give up your Weaver training to fully attune to an element and gain a boon. I'm sorry but I don't see why it ever should give you stability. It just doesn't fit.

The point I'm trying to make is that if you propose some additional source of Stability for Ele then you should pick skills/traits that fit Stability from a thematic point of view. I would look at Earth traitline, for example.

PS. Overall, I like that they removed stability from Bolstered Elements, it was too powercrept for a master trait, and it made all ele players use offensive Stances just to gain stability (spammy/lazy gameplay). Now there is more incentive to use Pry Stance at the right time and in the right attunements for max damage and spike combo.

I wouldn't mind Earth Attunement Unravel giving Stability.

It's along the same lines as gaining Stability with Earth traitline.

@Galvin.2704

look up unravel hexes

woven stride is the substitude for this trait. so at some point in time it made sense for air to have cleanses.

@"Yasai.3549" said:I wouldn't mind Earth Attunement Unravel giving Stability.

It's along the same lines as gaining Stability with Earth traitline.

I see what you mean. But then again, this would make Unravel a "stability" skill, not an "elemental unravel" skill because people would be using it as a Stability Button on 25 sec. cooldown. It would also completely devalue the new Stone Resonance change.

During one of the GW2 streams, a dev said that one of their aims was to "clean up" some skills/traits so they would be used for their intended purposes, not for their "secondary" effect. And boons on Unravel is just just a "secondary" effect (=should not provide powerful boons like Stability, that will become even more powerful in the 0.01 cc meta).

I remember Boyce using Unravel on his dagger/focus build to gain access to Shocking Aura for damage/combo/cc - the secondary boon that he gained from Unravel Air was nice, but it wasn't why he used it ( an example of correct Unravel usage).

@shinta.8906 said:@"Galvin.2704"

look up unravel hexes

woven stride is the substitude for this trait. so at some point in time it made sense for air to have cleanses.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unravel_Hexes

I see that it was a Weaver grandmaster trait that is now replaced by Woven Stride, which provides a similar effect but now requires that Weaver combines water (Cleansing Water trait) and air (Swiftness/Superspeed).

So thematically, it works because Weaver combines different elements (or their effects) into something new. So with Unravel Hexes, you could take Air/Arcane/Weaver to get a condi cleanse on air attunement. But it wasn't an Air trait, and my whole point was that condi cleanse wouldn't work for Air trait line (but it can work for Weaver because it combines Air with something else).

Unravel shouldn't even exist. It's an admission that weaver mechanics are a downgrade to standard ele mechanics. This used to be covered up by a few OP skills and traits, but now that those are being gutted there's no escaping from the fact that weaver is a downgrade.

@"Galvin.2704" said:During one of the GW2 streams, a dev said that one of their aims was to "clean up" some skills/traits so they would be used for their intended purposes, not for their "secondary" effect. And boons on Unravel is just just a "secondary" effect (=should not provide powerful boons like Stability, that will become even more powerful in the 0.01 cc meta).This is laughable when you look at other changes. Auras are still mostly going to be do-everything buttons for tempest and arcanes has their damage slashed because "instant skills should be more utility than damage" but their only utility is available as secondary effects from a trait.

@Coldtart.4785 said:Unravel shouldn't even exist. It's an admission that weaver mechanics are a downgrade to standard ele mechanics. This used to be covered up by a few OP skills and traits, but now that those are being gutted there's no escaping from the fact that weaver is a downgrade.

@"Galvin.2704" said:During one of the GW2 streams, a dev said that one of their aims was to "clean up" some skills/traits so they would be used for their intended purposes, not for their "secondary" effect. And boons on Unravel is just just a "secondary" effect (=should not provide powerful boons like Stability, that will become even more powerful in the 0.01 cc meta).This is laughable when you look at other changes. Auras are still mostly going to be do-everything buttons for tempest and arcanes has their damage slashed because "instant skills should be more utility than damage" but their only utility is available as secondary effects from a trait.

I agree with you. Unravel should be a F5 profession mechanic for weavers. Remove the boons, but make it a F5 skill. Or maybe even better, make the cooldown to double attune 0s.

I agree unravel should have been more of a class mechanic rather than a simple utility skill. An F5 would work very well. But the community has been asking that for years and no F5. Most likely it's the trade off Anet thinks Weaver needs

@Yasai.3549 said:I wouldn't mind Earth Attunement Unravel giving Stability.

It's along the same lines as gaining Stability with Earth traitline.

This makes a lot of sense. For balance, Stability should be attained when going defensively, rather than whenever using unravel at random.

I don't think stability in stone resonance (SR) and random dual skills is enough. SR forces all weavers to use that one utility, and stab on dual skills is way too situational. Stab on earth unravel could work.

@xDudisx.5914 said:

@Coldtart.4785 said:Unravel shouldn't even exist. It's an admission that weaver mechanics are a downgrade to standard ele mechanics. This used to be covered up by a few OP skills and traits, but now that those are being gutted there's no escaping from the fact that weaver is a downgrade.

@"Galvin.2704" said:During one of the GW2 streams, a dev said that one of their aims was to "clean up" some skills/traits so they would be used for their intended purposes, not for their "secondary" effect. And boons on Unravel is just just a "secondary" effect (=should not provide powerful boons like Stability, that will become even more powerful in the 0.01 cc meta).This is laughable when you look at other changes. Auras are still mostly going to be do-everything buttons for tempest and arcanes has their damage slashed because "instant skills should be more utility than damage" but their only utility is available as secondary effects from a trait.

I like this idea. Unravel would be fun as a baseline skill.

Implementing a mechanic to bypass the elite spec mechanics and restrictions ?

@MyPuppy.8970 said:Implementing a mechanic to bypass the elite spec mechanics and restrictions ?

There is already a mechanic to somehow bypass the restriction, but it come as a utility skill. The idea would be just turn it into baseline F5. Weavers would still have this terrible restriction most of the times, since the F5 would still have a cooldown.

Also, I can't think of another elite spec that has such a bad restriction crippling the entire spec so bad as weavers have. For a class with the light armor and low base hp sometimes having to wait 4-5s to access your #4 and #5 skill can be a death sentence.

Sword works because the biggest suitability skills skills are in #2 and are instantly accessible. This is one of the reasons we don't see many weavers running anything other than sword. Now we have evades in sword water #2, sword earth #2 and twist of fate, but them all are getting nerfed hard in the upcoming class balance. Sure in pve it will have little to no affect, the enemies are scripted and groups run pocket healers, but for spvp/wvw it will be a big hit. In PVE it is not a problem to predict what will happen 5s in advance, but against a player there is no way to do a 100% prediction.

DD for example has weak skills in #1 and #2. Their mobility, evading and survival skills are mostly in #3, #4 and #5. You are almost forced to slot unravel to play DD weaver in wvw. Have you noticed we don't see many weavers running DD? Staff is in the same boat.

@xDudisx.5914 said:

@MyPuppy.8970 said:Implementing a mechanic to bypass the elite spec mechanics and restrictions ?

I agree with the statement. However it would be giving weavers a free utility which would basically just make Weaver an upgrade from core. Unravel was originally just a tool to help with the attunements, but i would have prefered they designed something completely different. I accepted the fact of losing instant access to my #3 skills as a tradeoff for rolling Weaver. Whenever i feel they're crucial i just go back to core. I understand the clunkyness of dd and staff Weaver, but it's a skill design issue imo, since the skills don't really go with the flow of the weapons, except for Sword, which was designed with Weaver in mind.

Just as I expected, Weaver got hard nerfed in so many different ways. Sad part is, only sword Weaver was overpowered. Not the entire class. Unravel was one of those nerfs, even though it's used solely on non-sword weavers.

Yes, Anet wants weavers to use the utility otherwise they wouldn't have created it. It doesn't counter design. Yes, it needs buffs, that's why Anet added boons later on.

The only problem is, those boons don't help non-sword Weaver at all. Replace Might with Retal! That boon was stolen from Arcane. Replace Prot with Stab! Unravel needs better boons to be viable otherwise you won't see viable Dagger and scepter builds.

I thought this whole paradigm shift was to bring non meta builds up to par???

Its an easy fix give transmutation the ability to give stab. It would give real reason to run the earth line and balance to playing weaver vs core vs tempest as well as playing with core weapons vs non core weapons. It also give ele a real uniquest game play that it mostly lacking (having transmutation just clear and only fire line use feels like a massive waist of programing and time.)

Giving stab to Auras is a fun idea, but I'm worried that will buff fire line too much. With a change like that, all Eles could get Stab off transmutation Cooldown which is every ten seconds. Just by speccing fire and earth

Earth definitely needs buff and better Stab application, but that won't change Unravels lack of viability

I don't get why all earth traits are selfish except for rock solid... Water and arcane are already the group support oriented traitlines, without counting tempest. 3/7 trait lines dedicated to support is already more than enough. Make earth worth it.

@Stallic.2397 said:Giving stab to Auras is a fun idea, but I'm worried that will buff fire line too much. With a change like that, all Eles could get Stab off transmutation Cooldown which is every ten seconds. Just by speccing fire and earth

Earth definitely needs buff and better Stab application, but that won't change Unravels lack of viability

Not auras but transmutation witch have a cast time and an requirement of having the right wepon and aura up. I think there needs to be an stab on transmutation super speed and heal for 5 targets at 240 rang.

I think unravel need added boons than swiftness/regen/protection/fury, but not particulary Stab otherwise it'll become an awkward stab skill if you need to be in earth.Boons like Quickness(fire)/unblockable(air)/alacrity/resistance. We need a real power variant to Primordial stance, not a Bs/stab skill.